AFTER THE FIRE: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

AFTER THE FIRE: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

As originally published at Louisville KYBeer.com in December, 2013, and while previously reprinted here at the blog, I've been daydreaming about Real Ale again. Will Brexit have an affect on traditional ale in the UK (or what comes of it)? I've no idea, but let's hope not.

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“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”
–Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver

The very least I could do during two weeks spent in England’s lovely West Country was to ingest my gout medicine each and every morning without fail – preferably washed down with a pint of cask-conditioned Bitter from one of those pubs nearby already dispensing it, but in a pinch, grudgingly conceding the utility of mere water.

Yes, I know: Fish do IT in THAT. The solution? Eat more fish, especially with chips.

Somewhere a health fanatic reads and brays with dismay, but have no fear. It’s only despairing, defeatist clatter of the sort Winston Churchill wouldn’t have countenanced, even after his morning bottle of champagne, and these naysayers are inaudible to me — fully muffled by the cacophonous sizzle of a traditional English breakfast frying atop the stove, even the waxy tomato from Tesco’s, because it is destined for maximum exposure to hot oil just like all the rest.

Queue the Elgar, and consider this partial list of foodstuffs joyfully consumed during my holiday, including both local “English” fare and widely available culinary options borrowed from elsewhere.

Anchovies fillets (fresh)
Bacon
Baked beans
Bangers and mash
Black pudding (i.e., blood sausage)
Cornish pasties
Crab sandwiches
Egg rolls
Falafel
Fish pie (not Stargazy pie, alas)
Gajrati (regional vegetarian Indian)
Haddock and chips
Pie, mash, eel and liquor (the latter is gravy)
Pizza (loaded)
Smoked salmon
Spanish tapas
Steak & kidney pie
Thai red curry
Yorkshire pudding

Alas, I digress. It generally is my custom to entertain and inform in purely fermentable measures of prose, and yet on this most recent English holiday in July, 2013, I found it quite unthinkable to separate the culinary from the ale-mentary.

Overall, ways of the new were not my objective, and I did not search for top chefs flashing their own branded apron and sauce wear. Rather, my task was to focus on the glories of the much maligned traditional English table, and to accompany them with the native products of classic ale-making.

Mission accomplished. First, let’s review the liquidity to be found in a reference volume.

Just after purchasing plane tickets, and before any other arrangements had been made, I purchased the essential book for ale hunting in the United Kingdom: “Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) Good Beer Guide,” edited by Roger Protz, and fully revised for publication each year.

CAMRA is the beer world’s oldest and most doggedly pervasive consumer protection society, founded in 1973 for the express purposes of espousing and protecting cask-conditioned “real” ale from the intrusions of modern times. What exactly is cask-conditioned “real” ale? CAMRA explains:

Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

Just know that traditional cask-conditioned ale is a living entity. It is pre-industrial, “slow” beer at its finest, predating every advance in ease of packaging, and preceding all processing shortcuts undertaken for the sake of modernity.

Consequently, as a product requiring training, thought and effort to maintain and dispense properly, real ale and the pub where it is consumed are inextricably linked. In America, the “coldest beer in town” merely signposts the triumph of refrigeration. In England, the best pint of real ale within walking distance of a bus stop is stirring testament to the publican’s commitment to craft.

That’s why CAMRA’S beer guide is vital. The organization’s local chapter members serve as diligent boots on the ground, studiously analyzing ales and pubs on a daily basis. Their intelligence gathering is the heart of the book, making it the top source of information for the visitor who cares less about his bed and breakfast than finding pints of fresh ale. Which pubs are tops at tending their firkins? What do they usually pour? Do they serve snacks or meals? Are they hosts for discourse in their community? The book provides these answers, and many more.

My first visit to Devon and Cornwall was in 2009, and four years later, there have been changes in the pub scene. Owing to regulatory, political and societal factors too numerous to recount, pubs in the UK are diminishing in number, and that’s a bad sign. At the same time, there are more breweries now at work than at any point in a half-century.

Dozens of newcomers are brewing classic ale styles — Mild, Bitter, IPA, Stout and Porter – alongside newer variations, and they’re supplying local pubs. There may be fewer venues, but the range of choice probably is greater. Session strengths (below 4.5% abv) remain the norm, and while I might drop names (St. Austell, Skinner’s, Summerskill and Bridgetown), it wouldn’t matter, because none of the beers brewed by these excellent breweries are available anywhere close to Louisville KY. This is as it should be. They await your arrival, over there.

On a sunny Sunday in July, my wife’s cousin drove us from the city of Plymouth to the Dartmoor National Park. There, surrounded by rolling, sparse uplands and freely roaming sheep, we dined at a venerable establishment called the Dartmoor Inn in Merrivale. I enjoyed roast beef with gravy, cabbage, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. Two pints of well-tuned local Jail Ale from the Dartmoor Brewery in nearby Princetown completed this time-honored Sunday Roast.

Frankly, I gloried in the ambience: Dark walls, wooden beams, a low-hanging ceiling and a fireplace, with humps, stoops and irregular measurements, and overall, minimal space for a heavyweight like me to navigate. The roasted meal was deliciously overcooked, and the ale’s ideally balanced malt and hops kept my palate sharp amid the meat and butter. It was the embodiment of a lifetime’s fascination with BBC News, “The Last of the Summer Wine” and maritime gin rations.

But what of the calories and cholesterol?

Whenever healthfulness began encroaching, I merely reached for another custard tart, found the closest CAMRA-listed pub, and waited for the feeling to pass.

Brew, Britannia.

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September 5: AFTER THE FIRE: Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo (2013).

August 29: AFTER THE FIRE: In the Red Room, we’re all left – right?

August 22: AFTER THE FIRE: Drink, smoke and enjoy.

August 15: AFTER THE FIRE: Listening to "Dixieland" jazz, and thinking about drinking a beer.

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AFTER THE FIRE: Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo (2013).

AFTER THE FIRE: Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo (2013).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

As originally published at LouisvilleBeer.com on December 30, 2013, and previously not offered in its entirety here at the blog. It's been three years, though it seems like only yesterday.

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“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
–Leo Tolstoy

It’s been a long, strange trip, hasn’t it?

The first brewing insurgency of the modern American era began at New Albion Brewing Company, which commenced operations in Sonoma, California, in 1976. Auspiciously, a revolution in beer was spawned in the very same year as America’s Bicentennial celebrated the culmination of a previous uprising.

As a casual student of history, I’m aware that almost inevitably, revolutions consolidate into their own systematized pecking orders, even as they mature and gravitate toward future appointments with reinvention (arguably the best case scenario) or, more often, messy counter-revolutions.

Maybe we’re witnessing one or both of these outcomes just now in the world of beer.

These days, what used to be known as microbrewing bears the designeration of craft beer, and in terms of consumer recognition, the siren’s call of mainstream acceptance beckons. If this weren’t the case, there’d be no Blue Moon or Shock Top, those sleek mockrobrews designered and distributed by mass-market brewers for the express purpose of pilfering craft brewing’s vibrant foundational imagery for the benefit of shelf space and engorged multinational shareholders.

Yet in fairness, there’d also not be a Sierra Nevada factory perched incongruously amid the Appalachians, or Lagunitas situated on both the Pacific and Gold Coasts. When it comes to robber baron capitalism, pecking orders frequently can be brutal, and maybe we’re not doing so well with our own institutional imagery if the misty mythology no longer seems worth protecting.

Not everyone sees it this way, and the fact that I persist in doing so clearly marks me as an aging craft beer militant, one whose radical worldview was shaped by an active desire for better beer, close to home, amid a denuded landscape of ridiculously limited choice. There were fewer than 100 breweries in the United States when I attained legal drinking age in 1981; more than 30 years later, the number is 2,500. The beer scene has mutated beyond recognition and comprehension, and the revolutionary cadres have splintered into multiple spheres of specialized interests.

A homebrewing culture analyzes beer by ingredients and methodology, espousing a “brew it yourself” ethos, while traders and swappers revel in the mechanics of the chase, the art of the deal, and the joy of collecting.

There is a priestly ratings caste trumpeting the presumed exactitude and objectivity of language in quantifying beer, and a localist persuasion embracing the personal, grassroots experience of craft beer in the context of places and people.

On widely scattered occasions, albeit rare, these spheres even manage to overlap. Me? I’m an ardent localist, with an asterisk.

For those of us who grew to beer-turity prior to the Internet’s incursions, when social media was a figment of Dick Tracy’s wrist radio – the downtrodden tightly clutching dog-eared books written by the late beer writer Michael Jackson and anointing him as a reliable guide for pursuit of the perfect pint — one of the most important aspects of craft beer is the ability to tell a good story.

Jackson excelled at it. He was a journalist by trade, and relentlessly factual in his approach, yet a sheer delight in storytelling is his primary legacy, especially through a knack for linking good beer with interesting people in specific places. At the end of the day, what else is there?

I found myself reacting to these stories first by repeating them, and later, augmenting them with embellishment from personal experiences, the latter gained initially by traveling, and later by operating my own pub. They became personal gateway beer tales, tied inextricably together, addressing the past and advocating the future.

In 1992, the pub itself represented the logical conclusion to my quest. What we needed in my hometown was a beer culture of its own, one embodying the litany of who, what, where and why. Elements of other beer cultures could be adapted and deployed toward this end, but the objective never was to “be” Bamberg (to cite one example).

Rather, it was to create a milieu that would provide a local experience similar to Bamberg, primarily for those of us living here, and also for those who’d like to come visit. Eventually, we’d have our own brewery, which would be the apogee; locally brewed beer as restorative and springboard.

Central to all of this was, and is, storytelling. Nowadays, quality craft beer storytelling is hardly dead, although I fear it’s gone into some manner of cryogenic hibernation. In the present time, craft beer enthusiasm is expressed with a throwaway brevity, defying any true depth of feeling; miles-wide, inches-deep. Social media affords an abundance of minimal exposure, trivializing and often eliminating context. Beer lovers check in, tweet, post and rate – and yet they hardly ever tell stories.

I find it profoundly sad.

Consider the typically triumphant craft beer photo on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Usually it’s a hard-to-find beer from a highly rated brewery, the further from home and harder to source, the better. The beer’s “proper” signature glass is strategically situated, half-filled and seductive.

Unfortunately, what’s missing are human beings and an explanation for why any of it matters, and the end result is craft beer objectified, little more than accumulated beer porn to the practicing fetishist, without any need for an accompanying story because fellow beer narcissists are expected to already feel the tumescence of the titillation, and automatically shift into fully salivating Pavlovian mutt at the first glimpse of the visual prompt.

We all do it, even me.

As Billie Holiday sang long ago, “Them that’s got shall have, them that’s not shall lose.” I don’t root for the haves. Underdogs are way more appealing.
I’m tired of losing, not in the superficial sense of final game scores or reds and blacks on a bank balance sheet, but from acquiescing for far too long in a process whereby the collective I’ve spent a quarter-century assembling somehow tosses away the thread of its own narrative.

Rather than gaze longingly upon someone else’s masturbatory beer glass, I’d rather be able to tell the story of why the liquid in the glass is important, assuming it still is – and to be perfectly honest, there are times when I have serious doubts as to whether any meaning remains to be examined, although as a contrarian of long and sincere standing, I’m honor-bound and forever obliged to doubt and re-examine even those precepts nearest and dearest to my heart.

However, what I know beyond a shadow of doubt is that in the year 201417, it is time to tell more stories, not fewer, and to remove craft beer from its selfie-induced vacuum by relating it to the real world outside. Stories build community by reinforcing beer’s local origins, and stories just might be the best way to reach the next 10%, absent the pomp, circumstance and end-zone chest-thumping that has come so infuriatingly to define and bastardize the genre.

In order to complete the journey, perhaps we must come back to town, back to the origins, and back to the notion of there being no such thing as strangers, only those who haven’t yet become friends. Maybe the best way to become friends is to have a chat, not compare soiled raincoats.

Just think about it. Quite possibly, there’s something left to learn.

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August 29: AFTER THE FIRE: In the Red Room, we’re all left – right?

August 22: AFTER THE FIRE: Drink, smoke and enjoy.

August 15: AFTER THE FIRE: Listening to "Dixieland" jazz, and thinking about drinking a beer.

August 8: AFTER THE FIRE: A pre-digital Bohemian vignette, 1989.

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The PC: Taking my talents to the Right Bank ... my finale at LouisvilleBeer.com

The column was published at LouisvilleBeer.com on April 28, 2014. Beginning on May 5, each week's column will appear here.  

But it's all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see ya can't please everyone
So ya got to please yourself

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Taking my talents to the Right Bank

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
–Ernest Hemingway

You may be familiar with Papa Hemingway. He was a well-known writer in his time, and a lively, brawling personality who enjoyed good food and drink. Papa’s beer ratings weren’t always very objective, as when he expressed the view that Spanish lager was almost the equal of German.

Back to the basics.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well, STOP DOING THAT.

(excellent advice ... thanks)

ON THE AVENUES: The pea outside the pod.

... So, it is now 2014. At this point in time, in my chosen profession of all things beer, I'm in roughly the same position as Willie and Waylon were in 1973. I'm out of synch with the new normal, and as good as outlaw, if not an outright crank.

I find that it suits my inner Socrates somewhat gloriously.

Photo credit

The PC: Moss the Boss, his Dazzling, and what they taught me about “craft.”

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on April 21, 2014)

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Moss the Boss, his Dazzling, and what they taught me about “craft.”

In my view, the “craft” modifier for better beer has outlived its usefulness, at least without earnest industry-wide introspection as to what the practice of “craft” might actually mean if/when practiced.

Until then, I’ll begin with an anecdote. If my luck holds, I may end with it.

In October of 1995, when the Public House was only three years old, I departed the comfortable confines for a ten-day beer tour of European beer destinations, including Dusseldorf, Cologne and Belgium. There also was a brief two-day side trip by train to Copenhagen to visit my friends there. Accompanying me was David Pierce, John Dennis and Ron Downer.

Much beer was consumed.

The PC: My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on April 14, 2014)

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My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

A 1999 travelogue in three parts.

March 31: (1) A tale of a fateful trip.
April 7: (2) The future is the past.
April 14: (3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

(3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

I awoke groggy and disoriented. We had retreated indoors quite early the previous evening, aiming to avoid mosquitoes of Biblical proportions, and sat inside talking and drinking Baltika Porter in the odd glow of a never quite black summer’s night.

Allan’s local helper had been commissioned to prepare fish soup for a midday meal to be consumed just prior to making the drive back to Moscow, and this left us with several hours to explore. Allan proposed a drive to a nearby town.

Armed with bootlegged Jackson Browne and Bad Company CD’s procured for next to nothing at the thriving music market back in Moscow, we set out for the scenic trek to Kolyazin, a dusty and isolated nowhere town that has the eternal good fortune to be dusty and isolated less than four hours away from Moscow – this being “good fortune” because a brief look at any reputable map of Russia will reveal there to be hundreds of Kolyazins, most of them located in places that are so lost in the middle of nothingness that they might as well be on another planet.

The PC: My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (2) The future is the past.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on April 14, 2014)

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My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (2) The future is the past.

A 1999 travelogue in three parts.

March 31: (1) A tale of a fateful trip.
April 7: (2) The future is the past.
April 14: (3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

(2) The future is the past.

It was 1999, and from the beginning of the trip, it seemed a strange and disjointing sensation to be returning at last to a land that had captivated me so intensely earlier in my life.

In particular, it seemed quite wrong to be entering Russia by airplane. Before, back in the decidedly dark ages of the 1980s, I’d arrived in the Soviet capital only after long journeys by train, taking me eastward over a period of days through ever more mysterious and primitive concentric circles of the Warsaw Pact. Being able to effortlessly glide into an airport while ensconced in the belly of a Swissair jet seemed positively corrupt and decadent by comparison. The proletariat would harshly judge me.

A decade later, sprawling, brooding Moscow remained the imperial capital of Communism, at least in physical appearance. Seventy years of urban methodology was loosely draped with the familiar veneer of capitalism’s purported victory in the long running saga of the Cold War. Garish neons, intrusive billboards, cellular phones, car alarms — even the occasional coat of paint — all conspired to trick the unthinking visitor into believing that Moscow had become somehow Western.

The PC: My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (1) A tale of a fateful trip.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on March 31, 2014)

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My shoes are filled with Volga mud: (1) A tale of a fateful trip.

A 1999 travelogue in three parts.

March 31: (1) A tale of a fateful trip.
April 7: (2) The future is the past.
April 14: (3) Beer hunters lurking nearby.

(1) A tale of a fateful trip.

I knew we were in trouble from the moment the weather-beaten boat came into view. It had been hired by Allan Gamborg to take us out into the expanse of water that he swore was a river, but looked to me like a vast inland ocean.

A handful of pasty male natives in flowery swimming trunks eyed us with curiosity from behind their reeking cigarette stubs. There was an odor of gasoline in the air … or was it vodka?

The PC: Swill in the Time of Pornadoes.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on March 24, 2014 ... it's a reworking of a piece originally posted at NA Confidential)

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Swill in the Time of Pornadoes.

I suppose we might consider the breathtaking, cosmic significance of Oberon Day, and the joy of warm-weather beer arriving to crowd store shelves long before it should ever matter climactically, during a frigid March week, primarily because craft beer now insists on being just as vapid as the rest of corporate America.

But since this one paragraph already constitutes rhetorical overkill, let’s move on to what used to be the unquestioned highlight of spring, namely the illicit consumption of wretched swill.

Specifically, it was a long-anticipated spring weekend, planned for weeks amid bursts of testosterone-laden impatience ...

The PC: A Birthday Drinking Song.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on March 10, 2014)

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A Birthday Drinking Song

(The Potable Curmudgeon seeks to avoid self-aggrandizement when it comes to his own place of business. However, today is a special case)

Today is the 5th anniversary of Bank Street Brewhouse.

As luck would have it, Monday is our Ruhetag (in German, “rest day”), so the toasts must wait until the 11th.

The first official day of business at BSB came on March 10, 2009, and ever since then, NABC has been a three-legged stool: A front-of-the-house in two different buildings, plus a brewery at each, which we treat as one. Let’s see; that’s three, two and one, and it equals three.

The PC: It doesn’t suit me.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on March 3, 2014)

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It doesn’t suit me.

I pay fairly close attention to civic affairs in New Albany, and perhaps this owes to broad personal interests and a degree of community-mindedness, although as in most communities, a taste for low comedy doesn’t hurt.

Among the political tugs-of-wars witnessed on a daily basis throughout the year, those various mechanisms by which municipal governments of all ideological identities – both country and western – pretend to develop their economies have come to be especially entertaining to me.

Whether it’s my town or yours, they tend to work the same. A business purporting to be the second coming of Henry Ford, Ben & Jerry and Versace, all rolled into one unstoppable juggernaut, argues that it is poised to bring great joy to the inhabitants, not to mention a job or three, if only (ahem) the business climate might be adjusted just a tad. Consequently, it is gifted with a heady cocktail of incentives, including tax abatements, loans, grants, discount sewer coupons, lottery tickets and oral sex on demand ...

The PC: Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part Two.

Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part One (Published on February 24)

This tale has been relayed here before, but it's been almost eight years, so a reprise at LouisvilleBeer.com seemed merited. Surely Mitch Steele's visit to the Public House is one of the most memorable stories of our first decade in operation.

Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part Two

Yesterday in “Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part One,” I explored the background of Mitch’s visit to New Albany on November 8, 1998. Following is the entire, unexpurgated summary of the evening, as published in #99/100 of the FOSSILS newsletter, Walking the Dog.

“Mitch Steele: A great guy doesn’t make a great multi-national corporation.”

It shouldn’t be a problem.

There would be plenty of time before the FOSSILS meeting began to run over to Bluegrass Brewing Company with Syd and Cory Lewison. Our guest speaker, Mitch Steele of Anheuser-Busch, had said he would be there, and it would be a good chance to get to know him better in a more relaxed setting.

The PC: Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part One.

This tale has been relayed here before, but it's been almost eight years, so a reprise at LouisvilleBeer.com seemed merited. Surely Mitch Steele's visit to the Public House is one of the most memorable stories of our first decade in operation.

Part Two will be posted tomorrow.

Mitch Steele at Rich O’s in 1998 – Part One
Long ago and far away – roughly 1996, according to my increasingly unreliable memory – Anheuser-Busch dipped its bloated toe into mockrobrewing for the very first time, releasing a line called American Originals, and subsequently expanding its Michelob division to include a wheat beer, among others.

All of them eventually sank like the Titanic ...

The PC: Not so simple a symposium.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on February 17, 2014)

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Not so simple a symposium.

It isn’t often that two A-list highlights from one’s entire life occur in a single weekend, but it can happen. In fact, it just happened to me. Both memorable moments came about because of the craft writing symposium held in Lexington, Kentucky, on February 15.

The lesser of the two came on Saturday afternoon when keynote speaker Garrett Oliver called me out by name (“Mr. Baylor”), to contest a previous bullet point I made about two eighteen-wheelers filled with craft beer, passing each other on a lonesome prairie interstate highway, headed for opposite coasts.

Would the drivers even know to wave amid the widening carbon footprint of their payloads?

From Nov. 1, 2011: "Homes Away from Home."

I'm in reruns for a few days, posting past columns of note.

It really is a form of religion for me.

Homes Away from Home

We went for a stroll last Sunday and passed one of those fly-by-night evangelistic churches, this one occupying an old shotgun house.

A man I’d never seen before waved as we passed, and he called out, “One of these Sundays, why don’t you come to church with us?”

I thought about it, and answered: “Sure, as long as you’ll come to my church with me.”

He answered, “Where’s your church?”

“Any brewpub will do,” I replied, and walked on.

From Dec. 15, 2011: "Of Beer and the Pissoir."

I'm in reruns for a few days, posting past columns of note.

The winter of 2013-2014 has been one of the coldest ones we've had for a long while in Southern Indiana. There's been ice, snow and temperatures scaping zero.

My reaction? Well, piss on it.

Of Beer and the Pissoir

It may have been Archie Bunker who observed, “You don’t buy beer, you rent it,” and your humble columnist has gleaned a fair amount of experience in such matters in his career as professional beer drinker, especially when imbibing in Europe. Many aspects of the continent’s beer and brewing cultures have changed since 1985, but none more so than a steady escalation in cleanliness and comfort of the facilities at a typical watering hole.

From Sept. 15, 2012: "Jackson, Louisville, and the Color Red."

I'm in reruns for a few days, posting past columns of note.

It's a story that ties together the Red Room, geography, colors, politics and beer.

Jackson, Louisville, and the Color Red

Michael Jackson unexpectedly visited the former Rich O’s Public House in November, 1994, a tad more than two years after we opened. If I hadn’t been drinking for much of the same day, tagging along as the Beer Hunter made pre-arranged appearances at Bluegrass Brewing Company and the now defunct Silo, I’d have been far too nervous to properly function as host.

The PC: Conformity, contrarianism and a craft writing symposium.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on February 10, 2014)

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Conformity, contrarianism and a craft writing symposium. by Roger Baylor

In my stray jigsaw-puzzle-piece of the planet, the coming weekend is utterly devoted to the city of Lexington, Kentucky.

I never once thought I’d write that sentence, but Lexington is where my mother attended the University Of Kentucky, which is hosting an event called “Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture,” among whose participants I have been included by the symposium’s organizer, Jeff Rice.

The PC: On Sheryl Crow, the bourgeoisie and Flat12.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on February 3, 2014)

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The PC: On Sheryl Crow, the bourgeoisie and Flat12 by Roger Baylor

It is widely believed that noted philosopher-singer Sheryl Crow was the first observer to astutely detect the oxymoronic existence of a concept called “favorite mistake,” which she proceeded to describe:

“The perfect ending, to the bad day I was just beginning.”

For the uninitiated, an oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes seemingly contradictory elements into understandable obscurity. Famous examples include military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, “hurts so good,” and Kona craft beer.

Hearing Sheryl Crow’s old song playing on tinny, crackling outdoor speakers while waiting to pump some petrol got me thinking, and as such idling thoughts tend to go: Might there have been a “favorite mistake” occurring at some point during my career in beer?

The PC: A craft beer toast to opposing HJR-3.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 27, 2014)

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A craft beer toast to opposing HJR-3

Seated amid the cheesy 1960s-era veneer that delineates New Albany’s primary civic meeting room, idly monitoring a city council meeting, I was wishing there’d have been time at The Exchange for a third martini (sweet Jeeebus, why don’t they run a cash bar at functions like this?), when suddenly a beer discussion broke out on Twitter. My two cents quickly dispensed via the miracle of the iPhone, it was back to the numbingly predictable provincial political skullduggery

Then a friend tweeted.

“You own a brewery? I thought you were a city engineer or something.”

Sometimes I wonder myself.